Author Notes:

In other news:
- The comic now has its own domain: friendshipisdragons.com. You can still browse the site on *.thecomicseries.com; this just affords me a little bit more control over the site.
- There's a Kickstarter called Ponies for Pathfinder looking for a little bit of extra love. If the idea of a physical, fully fleshed out setting and race handbook for ponies in Pathfinder appeals to you, feel free to check it out.

97 Comments:

I'm amused to see that I got first post in the referenced comic as well. I'd better give myself a five sentences minimum requirement to ensure this doesn't happen again.

I had forgotten about Applejack's feat. I'd somehow overlooked the Evade Ambush power, but has it been changed since it appeared in PHB1? As written, I thought it affected only a number of allies equal to Applejack's Wisdom modifier, which is 1.

I don't think he is, Ponikon. He appears to trust the players to know their powers and apply them accurately. I've found that tends to make the game run more smoothly so long as everyone behaves in a trustworthy fashion. (And a GM knowing all the rules isn't much help if they don't.)

I wish it wasn't as frustrating for the poor DM, but then I sympathize with the frustration. When 4E saw an overhaul in challenge design, advising DMs to refrain from the use of powers that cost players actions because it wasn't fun, they neglected to mention how boring the game can be when a DM never gets to try anything cool with monsters either.

I don't consider that applicable to this case, though. Applejack spent a feat and is using a daily use utility power here. Even though the book says that she'd only be able to affect on other ally (based on her Wisdom score), I could see why the DM might choose to ignore that limitation. Optimization matters less than how players are given room to contribute to play.

My long ago Teen Titans campaign had a number of those situations happen on both sides~

1. While fighting Lock, Stock, and Barrel (A trio of holloween themed villains), the Titan hero Firefly got into melee with Barrel (who had a rediculous defense score). I forgot that Firefly had a limited use "overcharge" to his laser power and that overcharging has a shotgun effect (i.e. works best at close range).
At point blank range? It Hurt.

2. The Quiz was a supervillain with a game show theme. His powers were about light and sound illusions. Tried to mess with everyone's head by using those powers to make a roaring audience jeer the Titans. Except, I forgot that the hero Banshee was hard of hearing and thus had enough of a bonus to resist the audio. She blasted The Quiz off the stage.

3. In a major street fight against two reoccuring villains, Billy Numerous and MegaNeko, the Titans quickly ganged up on Billy and had him tied up with a street lamp. Somehow they completely forgot MegaNeko's powers and only tied her up with regular rope.
MegaNecko is a teen with size-changing powers. Twenty feet later and she punted two Titans for 3 points each.

I remember in a "Ninja High School" comedy game, my character's flaw was complete color-blindness. Often played for laughs, but rarely a serious issues over the course of the adventure.

Until the last session where at one point my character was the only one capable of reaching a bomb to diffuse it before it would blow up the science building. Never did "Cut the red wire" become the most useless comment ever uttered.
My character cutted a random wire. Turned out to be the correct one! O_o

I've heard of that coming up in real life. One of the guys on a bomb handling course didn't tell anyone he was colour blind until they were in the middle of a hands on exercise, and he had to ask which wire was the red one.

The colors won't matter in that there's no factory manual to confer with, but if you're working as a team someone to the side might see where a particular wire might go, thus giving a clue on how to diffuse the bomb. If he can't communicate that because either he or the person with the clippers is colorblind, then that's a big problem, now ain't it?

I remember one berserker I had once who had a rarely useful and unusual ability.

He could change genders at will.

In the campaign, I NEVER used this ability. Just left it sitting there in my character sheet for a long time. Then came the time when - because it was that sort of DM - we had to infiltrate a tribe of all women warriors that only allowed men in as slaves...of various sorts...or food. We had to get in there, talk to the leader, and retrieve a MacGuffin. The rest of the party was talking about dressing in drag, and the DM was rubbing his hands in expected glee.

Berserker: How many of us actually need to go in there?
DM: Well, I suppose just one.
Berserker changes gender.
Berserker: How about me then?
DM: ...

Of course, this was a good DM, so he rolled with it and we had fun. I had to stay in the tribe for a while to gain enough trust to reach the leader and the MacGuffin, and one of the flaws the DM exploited of my 'change gender at will' for fun was that my characters orientation remained the same (attracted to the same sex as before). Suddenly, the tribe had added to it a tradition of group bathing. Fun ensues.

Eventually, I just challenged the leader for leadership, and won. I then introduced the rest of my party as "My battle slaves" and lo and behold, we had an entire tribe of high level warrior women as my followers.

Zakaz, I love the story, but enemies who take prisoners should not have had to grow up on a diet of McGyver and the A-Team to comprehend why giving prisoners access to tools is a bad idea. It's not really important so long as you all had a good time as a result of the oversight.

In a game inspired by Total War, the DM put our group in a boat with the intent of us getting to another town, but we got ambushed by raiders on their own ships, so we loaded up the cannons on one side of the ship, my pyromaniacal kitsune snapped her fingers, fired all the cannons at once, and then had to stand around while the cannons were reloaded, and got shot in the shoulder, above her shock damage level, and then I was out of the fight, until I looked over my character sheet, and went, "Damnit, I had Shield, that shouldn't have done as much damage!" The GM went, 'Well, you wake up in the infirmary, and your shoulder hurts like a bitch, get back in the fight.'

Anyway, grappling rules are very much simplified and easier to grasp(Translation: boring) in 4E. You can no longer minmax for grapple and become unstoppable purely because you are the only one who has memorized them. Not that you can really minmax at all in 4E, but that's a rant for another time.

Hey, the grappling fighter can be pretty impressive. There's something about watching an elf haul a triceratops halfway across a battlefield, slam its head against an obelisk, and then pull it off its feet.

Clearly you never met my professional chef. Normally, this is an NPC designation, not even a real class. Just a commoner with lots of extra skill points sunk into cooking.

Two feats. One that allows him to double his movement speed for a single turn when gathering ingredients, and one allowing him a critical success in gathering ingredients on any roll over 15. Anyone reading this who is an experienced DM can probably see this coming a mile away.

Cue him leaping onto the back of a T-Rex, and then in a single turn, retrieving the heart from its chest to use for dinosaur haggis. While the fighter is running for his life. DM says that for the next five turns, The T-Rex is bloodied and then will expire.

TL;DR My commoner PC is the most OP level one character ever, short of pun pun.

Yeah only build i can think of that could handle a t-rex at lv 1 is a Enchantment specalist halfling with Precocious Apprentice:Ray of Stupidity, The Alternate Class Feature that replaces Scribe Scroll with Improved Initative and the Hummingbird familiar that adds a stacking +4 initative bonus

The biggest change, I think, to make it more specifically FiM-centric, is to rename Doppleganger, "Changeling", and rename the gods to their referenced characters... but that'd be a bit akin to making knock-off heroes in the super-hero MMOs.

Hey, THEY came to ME for a plug. I couldn't call myself a connoisseur of Pony RPGs if I turned them away, could I? Besides, this has been and always will be an equal opportunity webcomic - whether 3.5, Pathfinder, 4e, or other.

Okay, guys, you know what that means! There are seven dirty words we can't say in the comments or we hurt Spud.

And we need to be kind, and considerate, and not post pornography or talk too much in depth about torture, rape, slavery, or any serious issues, because google ads say no.

That said, this is the comment section for a webcomic about a game of D&D played by technicolor ponies. I don't think amn in depth discussion of such serious topics will surface again soon. Even though they have in the past.

Let's see:
1) I was able to knock out the entire party with failed Fortsaves on a sleep poison ambush when the wizard, who had the WORST fort save of all, reminded me that the prestige class I gave him made him immune to ALL sleep effects. Balls.

2) When the same party ran across my barbarian elite vampire lieutenant when factoring the damage I forgot to calculate in his damage reduction and fast healing that his armor gave him. It did remember to mention how ever when reviewing my notes to tell them what they'd get as they were brushing his ashes off it.

3) In my Dragoon game the DM neglected to recall that my character can jump up to an X amount virtually instantly that round with no penalties. At NO point does the book mention that had to be straight up or even on a slant. Yes, we basically had a full plate clad dragonesque battering ram.

4)When fighting a Lich the bastard dropped our cleric right before we were going to off him. And with all his damage reduction and fast healing we weren't going to off him with the few guys we had left. The DM however forgot that I can summon monsters, so I summoned a Celestial Dire Badger. Which can smite Evil. And it did, all over his face bones.

That's just rotten for a DM to do. I personally can't stand it when a DM twists a player's intentions without very good cause. It's just not right. At all. It's just as bad as a DM who penalizes you for not specifically saying that you're doing something, akin to: "I look all around the room." "You are ambushed from above." "Don't I get a Notice check? I was looking around." "You didn't say you were looking up!" ... That kinda stuff.

While I agree with Argonessan and Draxynnic in general on this subject, having a constant advantage prove an occasional liability can have merit. In games that make elves immune or highly resistant to sleep-causing effects, it would make sense for their enemies to employ pathways that could only be traversed in dream-magic, for example. As long as the result is merely an inconvenience as the characters, not the players, would see it, and the character's immunity comes into play as a benefit within the same adventure arc, I think the game and its participants are richer for the effort.

Yeah, I let it slide this time. I had recently made his raven familiar into a cloud of feathers in the last encounter so he had already taken a good dip of XP and time spent making that character.

You see, he got an immunity to fire with that class, and decided it would be funny to run through the fire trap just to rub the futility into my face as the DM. Forgetting that he told me his familiar, which had no such protection, was 'permenantly on my shoulder unless otherwise scouting around or with the party' roasted the poor thing.

The look on his face when I started rolling damage, and it was a LOT of d6's, made it all worth while.

No, the game differentiates between dazed, stunned, knocked out, asleep, and dead. Immune to sleep effects just means I can't make him fall asleep. His character still needed to sleep, and I could still do all the other things to him.